Just noticed the other day that my gf's '97 Prizm with the 1.6L smokes on startup after sitting overnight. It's not to bad but visible. Goes away once the motor gets warmed up. Definitely smells like burning oil.
I heard this is a sign of bad valve stem seals. Can anyone confirm this? There is no smoke when its warm even under heavy load. Can I replace these myself or would I be better off taking it in?
We got the car at 130K no idea about history. I have changed out every wear item and fluid in it though.
For now it doesn't seem to bad, would I be okay delaying this fix till next month without ill effects to the exhaust system and motor? We were also thinking about taking a 3hr trip next weekend...
Just noticed the other day that my gf's '97 Prizm with the 1.6L smokes on startup after sitting overnight. It's not to bad but visible. Goes away once the motor gets warmed up. Definitely smells like burning oil.
I heard this is a sign of bad valve stem seals. Can anyone confirm this? There is no smoke when its warm even under heavy load. Can I replace these myself or would I be better off taking it in?
We got the car at 130K no idea about history. I have changed out every wear item and fluid in it though.
For now it doesn't seem to bad, would I be okay delaying this fix till next month without ill effects to the exhaust system and motor? We were also thinking about taking a 3hr trip next weekend...
Thanks for any suggestions.
Sure sounds like stem seals to me. I don't know how it is on Toyota's I haven't ever done them. I had an escort for my previous work car and it did the same thing and I put 40k miles on it like that. It just got a little worse over time. If it is really bad it will cause other problems but the tranny gave out before it caused any real trouble in my case. It wasn't using enough oil to need to add any between changes just enough to notice on the dipstick.
I would think you would be fine until you could schedule it. My two cents
Definitely sounds like the valve stem seals. It started happening on my old 5A-FE engine, so instead of replacing the seals and changing the timing belt, I decided to just buy a 37,000 mile engine instead. The smoking on start up won't cause any problems, just make sure that the oil level stays high enough or else you'll definitely have something to worry about
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Hot oil ages rubber. Stem seal rubber gets turned to rock over time as well as engine oil seals. After you change the VSS, pay attention to changing all the other seals that bathe in oil. They will also leak eventually if they dont already.
Hot oil ages rubber. Stem seal rubber gets turned to rock over time as well as engine oil seals. After you change the VSS, pay attention to changing all the other seals that bathe in oil. They will also leak eventually if they dont already.
-SP
Interesting. I have not heard of that. Does this hot oil effect all the crankshaft, camshaft, and valve cover, or just the seal for the oil pump?
most corolla's end up burning oil.always keep it topped up on the dipstick between oil services and then you'll have nothing to worry about at all, I drove my car about 35k miles with the seals like that, and the last 18-20k miles without any service, and the only thing that fully gave up were the piston rings lol, stem seals didn't look too bad after I ripped the old engine apart
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Interesting. I have not heard of that. Does this hot oil effect all the crankshaft, camshaft, and valve cover, or just the seal for the oil pump?
Everything rubber thats inside your engine.
If you need proof, I have some 215k seals and valve cover gaskets from a 3000GT that are hard as a rock and didnt seal at all. That engine leaked badly! Now all the oil stays on the inside.
Tires get hard for completely different reasons. How come rubber bands get "gooey" when they get old? Two totally different effects in rubber aging.
I worked in rubber compounding research for a long time so I know a little about this stuff.
One test we used specifically for automotive was "cooking" samples in hot oil to see how it affected the test sample. If you want to know more about it you can look it up in the ASTM test procedures.
-SP
Last edited by speedy25; 06-10-2010 at 08:33 AM.
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Tires get hard for completely different reasons. How come rubber bands get "gooey" when they get old? Two totally different effects in rubber aging.
I worked in rubber compounding research for a long time so I know a little about this stuff.
One test we used specifically for automotive was "cooking" samples in hot oil to see how it affected the test sample. If you want to know more about it you can look it up in the ASTM test procedures.
-SP
Thanks for the info learn something new every day.
If it's burning a lot of oil then switch the valve stem seals out. You can get these parts for nothing on Ebay. I rebuilt my whole 4a-fe for $300. A lot cheaper than new car payments....but I was burning a LOT of oil, 1 quart in 250 miles.
As far as negative effects on your engine, you could foul your spark plugs and make it harder to start, that's about it.
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